Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/295

244 upon they crossed to the west side of the Willamette River, and driving their cattle through storm and mire to the Tualatin plains, there selected farms, and erected cabins for their families. They were joined soon after by the other mountain men, Doty, Walker, Wilkins, Ebberts, and Larison, forming, with the independent Presbyterian missionaries, Griffin, Clark, Smith, and Littlejohn, with their families, a rival settlement to that on Chemeketa plain. Robert Newell was born near Zanesville, Ohio, March 30, 1807. His father removed to Cincinnati when he was a lad, and apprenticed him to a saddler The death of his father left him his own master when about eighteen and to gratify a love of adventure, he engaged with Smith, Sublette, and Jackson, to trap beaver in the Rocky Mountains. With little education, but fair talants and good principles, he contrived not to be ruined by the lawless associations which were fatal to so many. For some trifling surgical performances in the mountains he received the title of doctor, which he always retained. Applegate says of him: 'He was brave among the bravest, mirthful without being undignified, prudent and sensible, and of unquestioned veracity.' He is well spoken of by Evans, in ''Hist. Or., MS., 342–3; by Ebberts, in his Trapper's Life, MS., 20; by Burnett, in his Recollections,'' MS. i. 115, 132–4 and by other authorities. While in the mountains he took to wife a Nez Percé but in 1846 he married Miss Rebecca Newman, of Marion County, Oregon. His connection with the early history of the country was honorable. In 1867 he removed to Lewiston, Idaho, where he died November 14, 1869.

Joseph L. Meek was a native of Washington County, Virginia, born in 1810. His mother's name was Walker, of the same family as the wife of President Polk. Meek, however, grew up without education on a Virginia plantation, and being troubled because his father contracted a second marriage, ran away and joined Sublette at the same time with Newell and Ebberts. The friendship formed between the two young adventurers lasted through their lives, and Meek, who outlived Newell several years, sincerely mourned him. Unlike Newell, Meek was excessively frolicsome, and enjoyed shocking sedate people. While undoubtedly brave and magnanimous, he missed much of the consideration really due his exploits, through his habit of making light of everything, including his own feelings and acts. He possessed a splendid physique, a magnetic presence, wit, courtesy, and generosity. His wife was a Nez Percé, who outlived him. He died June 20, 1875. Victor's River of the West, 41–3; ''Burnett's Rec. of a Pioneer, 157–61, 173–4; Hillsboro Independent, June 24, 1875; S. F. Call, July 25, 1875; S. F. Post, June 22, 1875; Portland Oregonian, June 24, 1875; Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans.'', 1876. William M. Doty died June 1872. C. M. Walker settled on the Nestucca River in Tillamook County. ''Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans.'', 1880, 58. Ebberts mentions John Kernard, W. H. Graves, and one Severn as being in Oregon at this time, and Gray mentions George Wilkinson and a man named Altgeier. ''Hist. Or.'', 192.

There was an arrival by sea in 1840 of an American vessel, the Maryland, belonging to the Cushings of Newburyport, with whom Jason Lee was in correspondence the previous year. The Maryland was